Costunolide causes mitotic arrest and enhances radiosensitivity in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Purpose</p> <p>This work aimed to investigate the effect of costunolide, a sesquiterpene lactone isolated from <it>Michelia compressa</it>, on cell cycle distribution and radiosensitivity of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The assessment used in this study included: cell viability assay, cell cycle analysis by DNA histogram, expression of phosphorylated histone H3 (Ser 10) by flow cytometer, mitotic index by Liu's stain and morphological observation, mitotic spindle alignment by immunofluorescence of alpha-tubulin, expression of cell cycle-related proteins by Western blotting, and radiation survival by clonogenic assay.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our results show that costunolide reduced the viability of HA22T/VGH cells. It caused a rapid G2/M arrest at 4 hours shown by DNA histogram. The increase in phosphorylated histone H3 (Ser 10)-positive cells and mitotic index indicates costunolide-treated cells are arrested at mitosis, not G2, phase. Immunofluorescence of alpha-tubulin for spindle formation further demonstrated these cells are halted at metaphase. Costunolide up-regulated the expression of phosphorylated Chk2 (Thr 68), phosphorylated Cdc25c (Ser 216), phosphorylated Cdk1 (Tyr 15) and cyclin B1 in HA22T/VGH cells. At optimal condition causing mitotic arrest, costunolide sensitized HA22T/VGH HCC cells to ionizing radiation with sensitizer enhancement ratio up to 1.9.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Costunolide could reduce the viability and arrest cell cycling at mitosis in hepatoma cells. Logical exploration of this mitosis-arresting activity for cancer therapeutics shows costunolide enhanced the killing effect of radiotherapy against human HCC cells.</p

Metrology Camera System of Prime Focus Spectrograph for Subaru Telescope

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a new optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph designed for the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope. PFS will cover a 1.3 degree diameter field with 2394 fibers to complement the imaging capabilities of Hyper SuprimeCam. To retain high throughput, the final positioning accuracy between the fibers and observing targets of PFS is required to be less than 10um. The metrology camera system (MCS) serves as the optical encoder of the fiber motors for the configuring of fibers. MCS provides the fiber positions within a 5um error over the 45 cm focal plane. The information from MCS will be fed into the fiber positioner control system for the closed loop control. MCS will be located at the Cassegrain focus of Subaru telescope in order to to cover the whole focal plane with one 50M pixel Canon CMOS camera. It is a 380mm Schmidt type telescope which generates a uniform spot size with a 10 micron FWHM across the field for reasonable sampling of PSF. Carbon fiber tubes are used to provide a stable structure over the operating conditions without focus adjustments. The CMOS sensor can be read in 0.8s to reduce the overhead for the fiber configuration. The positions of all fibers can be obtained within 0.5s after the readout of the frame. This enables the overall fiber configuration to be less than 2 minutes. MCS will be installed inside a standard Subaru Cassgrain Box. All components that generate heat are located inside a glycol cooled cabinet to reduce the possible image motion due to heat. The optics and camera for MCS have been delivered and tested. The mechanical parts and supporting structure are ready as of spring 2016. The integration of MCS will start in the summer of 2016.Comment: 11 pages, 15 figures. SPIE proceeding. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1408.287

Food Traceability Systems, Consumers’ Risk Perception, and Purchase Intention: Evidence from the “4-label-1-Q” Approach in Taiwan

Many food safety issues have arisen in Taiwan during the past decade. Therefore, in 2016, the Taiwan government proposed the "five rings of food safety" policy to comprehensively protect consumer food supply. Among these policies, the "4-labels-1-Q" approach was adopted to ensure the selection of foods with traceable labels for retrospective study. Hence, this study investigated the association between the degree of familiarity with the 4-labels-1-Q food traceability system and risk perceptions and also investigated whether a consumer's purchase intention toward fresh foods with food labels changed after viewing an educational film on food labels. This study defined subjects as the main food purchasers for their families; 290 valid questionnaire interviews were administered and educational films shown in Tainan markets and stores. Results showed that knowledge about labels significantly affected risk perception for labeling. Age, educational level, and degree of risk perception influenced purchase intention. Results also showed that after viewing the video, subjects' label knowledge and purchase intention increased significantly. However, after adjustment for age, educational level, income, and purchase places, the effect of film education on risk perception was insignificant, especially for those who had lower educational levels, including those older than 65 years. Public trust can be boosted through label education among age groups using different channels and methods, and encouraging the sale of labeled foods in traditional markets would be a useful strategy. Age, educational level, income, and risk perception of participants significantly affected purchase intention. This study can be a reference for designing risk communication strategies and promoting traceable agricultural products

Screening Dementia in the Outpatient Department: Patients at Risk for Dementia

The targeted screening for individuals at the risks of having dementia would be crucial to the further public health issues for dementia. This study aimed to conduct a screening study in an outpatient department of a regional hospital to screen people who were at risk of developing comorbid dementia. Patients who visited Kaohsiung Municipal Ta-Tung Hospital (KMTTH) clinics during the period from June 1, 2013, to May 31, 2014, were invited to participate in this screening voluntarily. The trained interviewer collected all participants’ demographic characteristics and used the instrument of ascertainment of dementia 8 (AD8) to find out suspected dementia ones. The result showed a higher ratio (24.1%) of suspected dementia in the outpatient department of a hospital, 500 out of 2017 subjects, than that in the general population. The median (interquartile range) age was significantly higher in the suspected dementia participants (70, (62, 77)) compared to that in nonsuspected dementia ones (65, (60, 73)), and the probability of suspected dementia was significantly increasing with age (P < 0.001). Instead of screening dementia in general population, screening people at the risk of dementia could be the practicable and important issues in the care of dementia

The Observation for Ocular Surface Diseases in Respiratory Care Center in One Regional Teaching Hospital in Southern Taiwan

Abstract: Purpose: To discover the incidence of ocular surface diseases in the RCC in one region hospital in southern Taiwan. Methods: A prospective study was performed from January 2014 to May 2014. We recorded the causes of admission, eyelid position, abnormal findings of the conjunctiva and cornea. Besides, we also collected data about age, sex, sedation score, the intubation or not, the ventilator setting, date of admission, endotracheal tube or tracheostomy used et al. Results: Total 30 patients were examined in RCC. The mean age of the patients was 60.5 years (range 32-82). 18 patients were male and 12 were female. 24 patients had been sedated or non-sedated with various ventilators. 6 patients were in T-piece trial. 22 patients had tube intubation and 8 patients had received tracheostomy. Mean stay time was 20.5 days. The percent of ocular surface diseases were 33.3% (10/30), and lagophthalmos was observed about 33.3% due to sedation. 23.3% (7/30) patients had conjunctival problems and 26.6% (8/30) had keratopathy. We found that 80% (8/10) patients with lagophthalmos had eye disorders. The endotracheal tube intubation group had a relatively higher incidence of ocular surface diseases (7/22；32%). If the sedation score lower than 8, 26 % patients may have eye diseases. Conclusion: The incidence of ocular surface diseases is closely related to heavy sedation or muscle relaxants. The assessment of eyelid position in relation to the ocular surface disease is the most important observation required in RCC. How to set up the routine protocol for eye care for the staff in ICU becomes valuable and serious today. We must keep in mind that prevention is always better than cure

Thrombomodulin Regulates Keratinocyte Differentiation and Promotes Wound Healing

The membrane glycoprotein thrombomodulin (TM) has been implicated in keratinocyte differentiation and wound healing, but its specific function remains undetermined. The epidermis-specific TM knockout mice were generated to investigate the function of TM in these biological processes. Primary cultured keratinocytes obtained from TMlox/lox; K5-Cre mice, in which TM expression was abrogated, underwent abnormal differentiation in response to calcium induction. Poor epidermal differentiation, as evidenced by downregulation of the terminal differentiation markers loricrin and filaggrin, was observed in TMlox/lox; K5-Cre mice. Silencing TM expression in human epithelial cells impaired calcium-induced extracellular signal–regulated kinase pathway activation and subsequent keratinocyte differentiation. Compared with wild-type mice, the cell spreading area and wound closure rate were lower in keratinocytes from TMlox/lox; K5-Cre mice. In addition, the lower density of neovascularization and smaller area of hyperproliferative epithelium contributed to slower wound healing in TMlox/lox; K5-Cre mice than in wild-type mice. Local administration of recombinant TM (rTM) accelerated healing rates in the TM-null skin. These data suggest that TM has a critical role in skin differentiation and wound healing. Furthermore, rTM may hold therapeutic potential for the treatment of nonhealing chronic wounds

miRTarBase update 2014: an information resource for experimentally validated miRNA-target interactions

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA molecules capable of negatively regulating gene expression to control many cellular mechanisms. The miRTarBase database (http://mirtarbase.mbc.nctu.edu.tw/) provides the most current and comprehensive information of experimentally validated miRNA-target interactions. The database was launched in 2010 with data sources for >100 published studies in the identification of miRNA targets, molecular networks of miRNA targets and systems biology, and the current release (2013, version 4) includes significant expansions and enhancements over the initial release (2010, version 1). This article reports the current status of and recent improvements to the database, including (i) a 14-fold increase to miRNA-target interaction entries, (ii) a miRNA-target network, (iii) expression profile of miRNA and its target gene, (iv) miRNA target-associated diseases and (v) additional utilities including an upgrade reminder and an error reporting/user feedback system

Metrology camera system of prime focus spectrograph for Suburu telescope

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a new optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph designed for the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope. PFS will cover a 1.3 degree diameter field with 2394 fibers to complement the imaging capabilities of Hyper SuprimeCam. To retain high throughput, the final positioning accuracy between the fibers and observing targets of PFS is required to be less than 10 microns. The metrology camera system (MCS) serves as the optical encoder of the fiber motors for the configuring of fibers. MCS provides the fiber positions within a 5 microns error over the 45 cm focal plane. The information from MCS will be fed into the fiber positioner control system for the closed loop control. MCS will be located at the Cassegrain focus of Subaru telescope in order to cover the whole focal plane with one 50M pixel Canon CMOS camera. It is a 380mm Schmidt type telescope which generates a uniform spot size with a ~10 micron FWHM across the field for reasonable sampling of the point spread function. Carbon fiber tubes are used to provide a stable structure over the operating conditions without focus adjustments. The CMOS sensor can be read in 0.8s to reduce the overhead for the fiber configuration. The positions of all fibers can be obtained within 0.5s after the readout of the frame. This enables the overall fiber configuration to be less than 2 minutes. MCS will be installed inside a standard Subaru Cassgrain Box. All components that generate heat are located inside a glycol cooled cabinet to reduce the possible image motion due to heat. The optics and camera for MCS have been delivered and tested. The mechanical parts and supporting structure are ready as of spring 2016. The integration of MCS will start in the summer of 2016. In this report, the performance of the MCS components, the alignment and testing procedure as well as the status of the PFS MCS will be presented

Metrology camera system of prime focus spectrograph for Subaru telescope

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a new optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph designed for the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope. PFS will cover a 1.3 degree diameter field with 2394 fibers to complement the imaging capabilities of Hyper SuprimeCam. To retain high throughput, the final positioning accuracy between the fibers and observing targets of PFS is required to be less than 10 μm. The metrology camera system (MCS) serves as the optical encoder of the fiber positioners for the configuring of fibers. MCS provides the fiber positions within a 5 microns error over the 45 cm focal plane. The information from MCS will be fed into the fiber positioner control system for the closed loop control. MCS locates at the Cassegrain focus of Subaru telescope to cover the whole focal plan with one 50M pixel Canon CMOS camera. It is a 380 mm aperture Schmidt type telescope which generates uniform spot size around 10 µm FWHM across the field for reasonable sampling of the point spreading function. An achromatic lens set is designed to remove the possible chromatic error due to the variation of the LED wavelength. Carbon fiber tubes are used to provide stable structure over the operation conditions without focus adjustments. The CMOS sensor can be read in 0.8 s to reduce the overhead for the fiber configuration. The positions of all fibers can be obtained within 0.5 s after the readout of the frame. This enables the overall fiber configuration to be less than 2 minutes. MCS is installed inside a standard Subaru Cassgrain Box. All components generate heat are located inside a glycol cooled cabinet to reduce the possible image motion due to the heat. The integration of MCS started from fall 2017 and it was delivered to Subaru in April 2018. In this report, the performance of MCS after the integration and verification process in ASIAA and the performance after the delivery to Subaru telescope are presented